According to Brides Magazine, the average wedding costs over £30,000 which for many couples, just isn’t a realistic price to pay for one day, so it’s time to look at making some cuts.

There are so many places you can pull back some of the budget when planning your big day and we’re going to be sharing with you 5 things that you just don’t need to buy for your big day and we promise it’ll be just as good without them!

Save The Date Cards

If you do a quick search online for ‘things you don’t need for your wedding’, save the date cards come up in nearly every single list, so it’s clearly a common theme that these tiny but expensive cards just aren’t required.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a save the date card, they’re a small card sent out to guests to notify them of the date you’ll be getting married. They’re usually sent out quite well in advance of the invites but the bride and groom don’t get any response to this, it’s simply a way of letting guests know to be free that day.

You can avoid paying for the design and printing of save the date cards by simply dropping your guests an email, making a social media group or just sending your invites out earlier!

Wedding Favours

It’s nice to give your guests something to remember your big day by but if you’re on a budget, there’s definitely ways you can avoid spending too much on wedding favours!

If you don’t want to ditch the idea completely, setting a strict budget for wedding favours such as £1 per head is a good way to keep the cost to a minimum. There’s so many DIY and homemade wedding favours you can throw together pretty easily and they’re often more thoughtful than something worth a lot more money!

Some low cost ideas that always go down well include a scratch card per guest, bulk buying old school sweets and striped paper bags and putting together your own pick and mix bags or if neither of those ideas suit, Hitched have put together 39 different wedding favour ideas for £1 or less, so one of those is bound to be a good fit for your big day!

Buttonholes for the Grooms’ Party

Flowers are one of the biggest costs at any wedding, so any saving you can make in this area is a pro and buttonhole flowers for the grooms’ party is something that can definitely be skipped.

You can either leave buttonholes for the grooms’ party altogether and let the suit do the talking or opt for an alternative such as a buttonhole pin. We sell a dapper floral tie and flower buttonhole pin set here at Slater Menswear which is a perfect accessory for the groomsmen.

A Massive Cake

We’re not saying to ditch the cake entirely because it’s a pretty classic part of any wedding but if you ask any couple that has already tied the knot, they’ll tell you just how much cake they wasted by trying to cater for everyone!

You can pretty much guarantee that nearly half of your guests won’t even touch it, so scale the cake down and opt for something just as aesthetically pleasing but smaller in size and more affordable in price.

An Open Bar

So many brides and grooms feel the pressure to put on an open bar at their wedding but the reality of that is that everyone else is likely to have one too many while you’re being left out of pocket, so the solution? Don’t put on an open bar!

A lot of venues will include a welcome drink for all your guests on arrival in the cost of the event and as a couple, you could choose to pay for each guest to have one more tipple on you but after that, leave it to your guests to pay and that way, it’s up to them how much they drink!

So, weddings are always going to be relatively pricey affairs but by cutting back on simple things like these, you can easily save a little money.

Another place to save some money is by shopping savvy for your groomswear and here at Slater Menswear, our selection of men’s wedding suits start at below £100 for a three-piece suit, making dressing your groomsmen totally affordable!

David 'Swinny' Swinton

David 'Swinny' Swinton is a Department Manager at Slaters, every day with him is a lesson in how to put an outfit together to maximum effect. Walk into the Glasgow store and find Swinny for instant fashion inspo.